What Not To Wear
by NeoVenus22
Summary: Gordo's sense of style has always rankled Lizzie. [complete]


Disclaimer: No one mentioned belongs to me.

Takes place some time in high school (post-Rome), but no spoilers.

* * *

Gordo was in the midst of a very satisfying circle geometry problem when he became aware of eyes on him. He looked up from his math book to find Lizzie gazing distractedly at him. "You're doing it again."

Lizzie blinked and straightened, caught unawares in addition to being just plain caught. "Doing what?" she asked, and she wasn't making a big show of it, so Gordo knew it wasn't an act.

"You're staring at my clothes."

Predictably, Lizzie immediately went on the defensive. "I am not."

"Yes totally were. There! You're doing it again." Lizzie's head jerked up, her gaze straying from the lapels of his shirt at last to his face. "What's wrong?" he asked.

"Nothing's wrong," she insisted. The higher pitch of her voice, bordering on shrill, was a dead giveaway.

In cases like this, calling her out wasn't enough. He had to maintain a firm resolve, and never back down. He could do this in the careful delivery of one word. "Lizzie."

She huffed out a barely-there sigh of defeat. "Your shirt."

Gordo glanced down. It was a gray bowling shirt, with red trim and 'Saul' embroidered in red on the breast pocket. It was maybe a size too large, but so much of his wardrobe was. The looser his clothes were, the more comfortable he felt. "What's wrong with it?" he asked, poking at a loose thread in the bottom hem. "It's vintage. Isn't vintage in, or whatever? _Your_ shirt's vintage."

"My shirt is distressed retro. Yours is actually vintage off of some gross guy's back."

"Hey, you don't know that Saul's gross."

"He's a _bowler_, Gordo. They're all gross, old men, with combovers and beer breath." Gordo raised an eyebrow, but refrained from mentioning her bowling nights with her father. "And now you're covered in bowler sweat."

"Uh, I did wash it."

Lizzie stuck out her tongue. "There's not enough bleach in the world to erase the essence of Saul."

"Oh, now you're being melodramatic. This shirt is plenty clean. Not to mention less gross than any number of things."

"Name one."

"All right. For example, that lovely cafeteria meal you're scarfing down," he answered with the hint of smugness, executing an over-the-top gesture in the direction of her orange-y macaroni and cheese.

"That's a freebie, and a given." Although he noticed she turned her fork on its side to create a barrier between herself and the soggy noodles. "Try again, genius."

He grinned. "Kissing. You'd get more bacteria kissing someone than you would from this shirt." Lizzie was obviously thoroughly amused by the new direction of their conversation, but she managed to keep her reaction in check, just settled back in her chair with an 'oh yeah?' face, and waited for him to go on. "That is why they call it swapping spit, you know," he added obligingly.

Lizzie rolled her eyes in the ultimate display of ignored teen angst. "Only you would take all the romanticism out of something as beautiful and meaningful as a kiss, and break it down to its biological elements."

"Actually, biologically speaking, kissing is about as meaningful as reading one of your trashy celebrity magazines." Two slights for the price of one. "It's an unnecessary action. It distracts the mouth from more important functions, like eating, and it's less effective than procreation."

She let the comment about her extracurricular habits slide. "Yeah, but can't kissing eventually lead to procreation?"

Gordo twirled his pencil in his fingers casually. "C'mon. You really think primitive man worried about seduction?"

"No," she admitted. "I guess they were more about let-me-club-you-and-take-you-to-my-cave. Still, they didn't know what they were missing." She leaned across the orange table and poked his forearm. "Useful or not, it's fun."

"Fun?" said Gordo teasingly. "Are you sure? Even if the participants are trading off more bacteria than is in old Saul's shirt?"

Lizzie slammed her palm flat on the table. "Aha!" Victory gleamed in her eyes. "So you admit the shirt's gross."

"Why are you harping on my shirt?" he asked, his voice shaking with repressed laughter. "Does it really bother you this much?"

"A little," she confessed, with a helpless sort of shrug.

"Seriously, why?"

Lizzie looked as though there were more words in her head than she felt comfortable choosing from. She at last settled on, "Don't you think wearing other people's clothes is gross?"

"You borrow Miranda's clothes all the time!" The injuustice of it all, not to mention the hypocrisy of it all, was finally starting to take its toll.

"I _know_ Miranda." Lizzie was giving him that look he knew all too well, the 'how can you be so smart and so dumb at the same time?' look.

"It's not like I can call Saul up and get a complete history of his hygiene habits," he said.

"Then lose the shirt!"

Though he knew she hadn't meant it that way, he couldn't help but chuckle at the implications of her statement. "You want me to take my shirt off in the middle of the cafeteria?"

Lizzie blushed profusely. "No." In an obvious cover, she added, "People are eating."

"You know, your weird cultural hang-ups are compromising my style."

"It's not _weird_, Gordo, you are wearing some guy's shirt. There are probably Cheeto molecules embedded in the cloth."

"And you think that when you pull your ragged, seventy-dollars-so-we-can-rip-them-for-you jeans off the rack, you are the only person to touch them, ever? When you go to try them on in the back, you are trying on everyone who's tried them on before you."

"Gordo."

"Oh, no, missy. You started this, you're going to finish it."

Lizzie rolled her eyes so hard he thought they might fall out of her head. "Okay, fine. You win. Happy? I'm shallow, petty, and spend too much on clothing."

"Clothing that has just as much risk of germs as mine?" he prompted.

"Sure, why not." She made an exaggeratedly pained face at him. "Can I eat now?"

"No." With quick reflexes he didn't usually possess, he reached out and dragged her orange lunch tray across the table to sit greasily on top of his math book. "Say my shirt's cool."

"No! It's all..."

"Ignore Saul for a minute, and whatever his habits might have been. Is the shirt cool?"

"If you like bowling," she hedged, then when it became apparent he wasn't going to budge on the matter, she sighed so hard she slumped over the table. "Fine. Your shirt is cool, in a Gordo, I-don't-care-how-I-look way. It's so uncool it's cool."

Gordo grinned. "Good enough for me," he said, and returned the tray. "Enjoy your mac and cheese."

She poked it experimentally, sniffed a forkful, and frowned. "It's cold."


End file.
